Monday, April 27, 2009

Corn in particular is in everything and a lot of things we'd never expect in forms that, well don't seem to be even remotely related to what we think of as corn or soy for that matter. What got me on this was a letter from my nephew Natan, who after Passover decided to check out the ingredients in one of his favorite passover junk foods. I asked him if I could share his letter with you and I got the OK so here it is, be sure to check out the partial list of all things corn at the end of his letter:

I've been meaning to e-mail you this because it really disturbed me (it's nothing that serious). During passover which I know has been over for a while and doesn't really affect your food choices corn and soy are forbidden (which is why I love passover the big GMO's are nowhere near my diet) and there is a snack that we always have in the house. They are chocolate covered frozen marshmallow puffs (I know they are bad but it's passover) and we get them every year. They are made by Joya and I didn't bother to check the ingredients but after passover I did. I found out that they contain corn syrup and soy lecithin. >:(

There is a note near the ingredients saying that "Liquified legumous extracts, E.G. corn syrup, in kosher for passover foods, are fully sanctioned for ashkenazim (me) and sephardim alike by preeminent orthodox....."bla bla bla

I interpreted it as this, corn syrup isn't a corn product and soy lecithin isn't a soy product because we're not allowed to eat corn and soy and somehow those two wonderful ingredients were allowed by the frummest of the frum rabbis in our food. As far as I know corn syrup is corn and soy lecithin is soy and both are strictly forbidden so this just amazes me and pisses me off. If they can sneak this crap past the Rabbis imagine what they can (and are/will) sneak past our government.

My thought on it is that after genetic modification and all the processing that goes on the Rabbi's don't consider it corn or soy any more.

My over all feeling is, as you already well know, manufactured foods are a bad idea, and maybe it's a wonderful feat of science to be able to do all this cool and nifty stuff with corn and soy, but I think we'd all be better off if it was left at the very least in it's original non-genetically modified form before we went ahead and changed it.

My favorite thing in the list below is that in some form or another corn is used in explosives. Nice.

This list was provided by Casco a commerical corn processor in Canada. I cut and pasted from a chart so I haven't a clue what all the dots are next to the products, if you really want to know more you can download the chart from this site.

About Me

Urbanfoodguy aka Mark Owen Self taught cook with an environmental/political bent. 28 years of cooking experience. I live in Manhattan on the Lower East Side in an apartment with an amazing kitchen thanks to my partner of 21 + years, Neil. In the last 4 years I have focused more and more on food. It started at the same time as I was about to open up my import/retail business LaoLao Handmade. Over these years I have been a private chef, catering and 4 years of Food Styling. I've worked for most of the major food magazines such as : Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Real Simple, Oprah, Martha Stewart's Everyday Food and many more. Check out this site for some photos of my work. I've also worked in the prep kitchen for the Food Network with Bobby Flay and Paula Dean.